I like music, and I have a broad spectrum of music I like to listen too. Traditionally I am a Rock n Roll kinda guy, I love the thundering thump from the drummer, the high pitched whine of the guitar, and screaming vocals of most bands. I also, when the mood / singer is right will listen to a bit of rap, country and even some techno/house music. Then there is the Beatles, Rolling Stones and other classic rock mix. Spend 10 minutes on my Pandora channel and you will get a wide breath of music that would probably make your head spin.
Now let me be honest, I can’t play an instrument to save my life, and most musicians would beat me to within an inch of my life if I even hinted at touching an instrument, but some of this changed with games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Not to say that these games unlocked my hidden talent for music, but they did allow me to play along with some of my favorite songs and experience the rush of jamming on the center stage. I really enjoyed both games, and found that Rock Band was much easier for me to follow along with then Guitar Hero, but that is neither here nor there.
Sadly I would still be playing these games if not for my poor Xbox, which decided of late to stop working. Well it still functions but the disk drive will no longer read any disks. So it has turned into a glorified Netflix box, which my two boys love to death. So I moved on but always found a way to incorporate my musical selections into my gaming. Most of the time I am playing World of Warcraft, I will have my trusty Android Phone, or Winamp on my pc rocking along as I kill some digital dragons.
Well this was the case till I found two games on Steam that allowed me to crank out my favorite songs and have them directly affect the game I was playing. Now neither of these games are anything like the Rock/Hero but they are fun, engaging, fresh and very easy to play.
The first game is called Audio Surf (yep that is a Steam link, my download place of choice). The game is like chess, easy to learn, hard to master. You start off by picking a song from your own songs on your hard drive. The song will become the “race” track that your little space ship surfs along. The way the track rises and falls is based on the beat of the song you choose along with the rhythm of the song. The faster a song is the more points you will get, along with the faster the game moves.
Now your little ship has a grind under it, and on the track is different colored blocks. As you fly through the song you pick up these blocks, by running into them, and when you collect three blocks and fill a part of the grind they disappear and turn into points. There are also grey colored blocks that you need to avoid. If you hit them they will fall into the grind and block you from putting a colored block in that spot, keep you from getting points. The game is quick fast and fun, and also comes with local, and global leader boards for each song.
The game also has different modes which change the game slightly by giving your ships different abilities, like reorganizing your board on the fly, or even using the grey blocks you pick up as shuriken which can be throw to destroy other grey blocks on the track.
The other game I discovered has a more action feel but still uses the music to directly effect the game play. It is called Beat Hazard , and the game is simple in premise and very addicting. Beat Hazard is a game in which you are a small ship fighting off waves of other ships which fly in depending on the song being played.
As you play you rack up points for your kills, but also collect power ups to increase the damage you do. The power ups come in four forms. Volume and Power allowing your ship to do more damage and even have a wider spread of your guns. Volume will also increase the the volume of the song being played. You also have +1 power ups that increase your score modifier, which will increase the score you get during the song. Finally you have a super bomb, which is a an Area of Attack shot that spreads out from your ship, and also gives you a small shield protecting you from damage. The game is chaos incarnate, with lighting effects from the song, your weapons, the enemies weapons and debris from destroyed ships. In the heat of the moment it is easy to lose track of enemies on the screen or your own ship. The game also has two other features to increase you score multiplier in the from of a Daredevil meter. The longer you go without shooting the more it racks up your multiplier. Also they have a Survivor bonus which applies when the song has a slow/quiet moment and you have multiply enemies on the screen.
The song also directly effects the shots from your ship, when the song is slow or quiet your ship will not put out very consistent shots, if the song is loud, fast and hard you will be a force to reckon with on the screen. The game also comes with leader boards, a Rank up system, which give you more things like score multipliers and super bombs.
My favorite thing about both of these games is that each of them can be played as little or as much as you want. They are both fast pasted and quick to jump into. No messing around with story, inventories or character screens. Just get in there and have fun! Also they are perfect for younger children, as they are both have very little in the way of mature content, and if you watch what songs they pick from the list the game can have no mature language what so ever.
I have included two Youtube links for each song to give you an idea of game play.
I am at a crossroad with World of Warcraft and I am not sure how to handle it. See I have never been “hardcore” about the game. When I started WOW I was off an on again for a long time. Most of the off parts were due to guild drama, friend drama, or just drama in general. I liked the game but beyond getting a character to the max level and flirting with a bit or raiding and player vs player (which I suck at!) I never hung on.
That is until I got back into it on a whim several months ago, and rejoined with some old guild mates, and just really connected with them. They were new players in just about every way you could think of, but they had the desire to raid, and the ambition to build a small casual guild for that purpose.
This was during the Lich King expansion and Ice Crown Cathedral (ICC) was fresh and new for everyone. I was offered the position of Raid Leader/Officer, something I had never done in the past, but kinda enjoyed, it gave me something to focus on in the game other then my character.
We slowly built our little guild up, finding new members / raiders and generally kicking a lot of ass in ICC. After months of working on the instance we defeated the Lich King just prior to the release of the next expansion.
With Cataclysm came new content, new goals, and even more work. I say work cause right now this is how the game feels to me. I got my main character to the max level again, slowly gearing him up and ready for the new raids. The faces in my guild have changed some but the core group is still there and chomping at the bit to do some raiding.
I have spent hours pouring over information on the new raids. Working through the logistics of what we have in the group versus what we will face in the instance. I have pushed, prodded and helped as much as I can to get the other raiders going and ready.
The problem is that I love the people I play with. They are fun friendly, easy going crew who know how to enjoy the game for what it is and help each other where needed. I have told several of them that they are reason I keep logging in. For not them I would have quit a long time ago.
I can feel the slow burn happening with my thoughts on this game. I can feel the desire slipping away each time I sit down to play. I know if I quit now I will be back inside a month just because I will miss the hell out of the friends I will be leaving in game.
The game has always been a way to deal with the stress of my day. A place to clear my head and focus on something other then work, bills, and day to day stress. I always walk away from the game feeling a bit better with a clear head, and different perspective on things.
Maybe I am just being a little bitch about this, maybe it is time to admit that the my time in this game is at an end.
What do you all think? How have you dealt with this kinda of feeling for yourself? Not just in an MMO thing but maybe you have gotten this feeling with recent online shooters like Call of Duty or Modern Warfare. What solutions have you come upon?
Aright so in my last blog, I was talking about how my gaming life got off the ground and the influences that lead to some of the different types of gaming I got into. I know I spoke more about traditional gaming and less about actual video gaming but this is how I got started.
Well growing up I never had much in the way of video games. I didn’t even have much beyond the original Nintendo system till I was about 16 years old, but this all changed when my father gave me his old piece of shit personal computer. Now this had an Intel Pentium 133 MHz processor, and at the time was miles behind the PC’s of the day. As much as I hated that machine it taught me a lot about owning a computer and how to maintain, and squeeze as much juice as I could from it. More or less it was not much of a gaming rig, but with a bit of money and some hard work I was able to play a couple of games on it, including my first real first person shooter, Half Life.
This game blew me away, it ran like shit on my poor machine, lagged to be all hell with more then one head crab on the screen and I barely had the hand- eye coordination to manipulate the mouse and keyboard to do something as simple as move and fire. The first night I got it a friend came over to check out the game and tried to give me a quick lowdown on how to play it.
After many failed attempts of having me use both the mouse and keyboard, we resorted to having him use the mouse while I moved the character, and co-op gaming was born...well kinda...
Once I was able to get a job and a bit of money I started flirting with other types of video gaming. Notably I had an original (very used) Xbox, and a Gameboy, in all it’s various forms. I always gravitated back to my PC and after several years of tinkering, praying and frustrating nights I said good-bye to the old girl and saved enough money to build my very first gaming rig.
I still remember that night, sitting in my dining room, parts spread out all over the place. Reading from the book “Building a PC for Dummies” and scared shit-less that I was going to break something.
After only an hour the machine was built, I dubbed her “Molly” and she was humming along installing Windows 98 (I borrowed from a friend) and eager to push a game onto her newly formatted hard drive for the coming hours of gaming goodness...
Gaming goodness I bounced around into a lot of different games and genre’s over the years, Diablo, Diablo 2, couple of different Muds and even got my first hit of the MMO crack pipe with Dark Age of Camelot.
Dark Age of Camelot or DAoC was an odd duck I must say. The idea of playing a progressive game like this was very foreign but fun as all hell. Some of my fondest memories were doing realm vs realm (PVP) taking keeps, smashing foes and generally enjoying the guild I was in.
After a time, looking at you Trial of Atlantis, the game just never felt the same. I did find a friend or two that were moving on to Everquest 2. I started EQ2 with the same bright hopeful outlook but after several months of playing I quickly realized that the game was not for me. Soured slightly I started bouncing around to other MMO’s looking for the spark I once had for DAoC.
Then I bought into the hype that is World of Warcraft, yep I sold my soul and tried the game. Not being much of a RTS player I had no idea behind the lore or storyline of the game, but with the encouragement from some real life friends who were playing I gave it the old college try.
My first attempt failed miserably, I was a total noob, made all the noob mistakes and just could not find the character, class or hook. I loved the setting, game play and visuals of the game, but it still was not the spark I had for DAoC. I played for several months and tried my best, but the birth of my first son, and my other gaming interested pulled my attention away.
Such was born my interest in the Xbox 360. My first experience with it, was when I was at a friends house, on release day and I was stunned at the abilities of this little white box. Weeks later I would rent one from a local video store to firm my plans to purchase the device and enjoy all that it had to offer.
My poor PC Molly was now grossly out of date and struggling with playing the newest games, where my Xbox would take each and every game I put into it and play without a hitch. Xbox Live would open my eyes to online competitive play and the old spark of realm vs realm, or player vs player was satisfied beyond measure.
The Xbox allowed me to be the single player and the multi player all in the same moment with a simple switch of a disk or in some games a flick of the controller stick. I tired each and every game I could get my hands on, and with the death of my miniature gaming life I found more time to enjoy this system.
But like everything in life this too will become stale and my attention will once again turn back to PC gaming, with the advent of a new machine and the rebirth of miniature gaming goodness.
Next post will be my final gaming life post and what I am currently into, and how I have found the perfect balance in regards to gaming in all it’s different forms. From console player, to PC player to miniature game player
Yeah ok, so the title is cheap and retarded but it is 8am here in the cold north, and I am still working through my first cup o' joe. Say "Hi" Joe...
So any who, who the hell am I, and why the hell did I take the time to write up this silly little blog? Well I am a gamer at heart like everyone else on this site along with being a father of two budding gamers, ages 9 and 1. My taste in gaming ranges from pushing metal across a table, tossing dice to controllers and the destruction of all digital dragons. I guess I should explain a bit about my gaming past and what has lead me to be so content with my gaming life as it is now.
My gaming life started out much like a lot of people's with the a simple piece of paper, some funny shaped dice and a Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition Players Guide. A friend of mine introduced me to the wilds of role playing when I was 13 years old. Now I had been role playing long before I ever got a "group" to play with, looking back at the times I spent in my room with my little G.I. Joe guys, the scenarios I would dream up in my head, then played out in my minds eye as I danced the little figures around, making them respond to encounters I set up. So naturally when it came time to sit down with others, and play D&D it was easy for me to slip into a character and play out the story line. I have watched my oldest son sit and play with his toys and chuckle as he quietly plays out his own stories and encounters with his Legos or Star Wars figures and I smile trying hard to follow the movements of the figures and work out his story.
Now role playing was good, when it was good, but life can always get in the way, and when high school was over so was role playing. People moved on, grow up, or just lose intrest. While D&D opened my eyes to role playing, the Nintendo System opened my eyes to video gaming. Now if you have no idea what cartage blowing, flip top, 8bit console I am talking about then stop reading, open a new tab and google it. Go ahead... I will wait...
You back? Good, so now you know what I am talking about. Mario can claim another video game cherry, cause he was my first. Sigh...<3 I remember the first time I heard that crazy 8bit soundtrack, I can remember involuntarily bouncing my arms as I make Mario jump around the screen, as if the act of me moving would make the little sprite move faster or jump higher. I still remember the day my sister and I convinced my mom to try the game. It was beyond funny to watch her try to work her hand - eye coordination to just do something as simple as make Mario move forward across the screen. Sadly she gave up after fifteen minutes of frustration, me and my sister got a nice laugh either way.
Looking back video gaming was so simple and easy back then. Games were viewed by cover art and back of the box descriptions about the story lines. Everything was broken down into Nintendo games, or PC games, or Sega games. First Person Shooters were "on rail" laugh fests and RPG's were epic games of story and characters. Sure some of them sucked harder then a Detroit prostitute in the back seat of a car, but it was still a video game and that at times was enough to make it just cool.
Yeah I know I sound like the old man on the porch. "IN MY DAY! we didn't have fancy save files and extra lives, when you died in a video game, the cartage would melt down! 50 miles!! in the snow!! up hill both ways!!!" But this argument is for another blog, back to my thoughts on this one. Gaming for me started much like many other gamers, D&D paved the way in my mind for becoming a character and Nintendo took me beyond dice and paper.
It is funny that as much as those two things are alike, dice and video games, how easily they pulled my attention into two distinctly different gaming directions. Dice pulled me into the world of Miniature gaming and video games into MMO's.
To think that they guy that dragged me to my first role playing game was the same guy to push a funny looking plastic, painted model into my hands and taught me how to play miniature gaming.
Space Marines and Orks, Thousands of little tiny blue plastic figures, each carrying a black and chrome SMG and looking tough as hell! “Wait...I have to paint all of them?!” Yep he failed to mention that part after I bought an almost complete space marine army.
So I painted, and glued and painted some more... I never really got into the game of Warhammer 40K, I liked it well enough but tactically I always fell short of the mark. I played for a year or two off and on, but just never got the hang of it. Sadly I loved the universe and storylines, just not the game.
But Warhammer 40K was a gate way drug to a new type of gaming, new friends and new experiences. One of these new friends would show me a game, called Warmachine by Privateer Press.
Warmachine was game that was smaller in scale and setting, a fantasy steam-punk game where powerful magic users would command giant metal steam driven war machines (see what i did there!) into battle.
I instantly fell in love with the game, the setting and the characters. I loved the game so much I started helping out the local organizer with setting up events, tournaments and leagues. this lead to becoming an official volunteer for the company and sadly my biggest mistake. The pressure of being an organizer was great, drama ran deep with my gaming group and after two years of hard work and labor I watched as it all fell apart because people could not get over themselves and just play the game.
So I drifted away, back to the saftey of video games, online and not, where a world I had long ignored had grown by leaps and bounds....
Tomorrow I will post up my journey into video gaming, along with my quiet return to Warmachine...
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